Refold Approach to Language Learning: Spanish ~1500-Hour Update

The mythical 1500-hour mark. Am I fluent? Am I done with Spanish?

Santiago de Compostela Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

This is my thirteenth update for my Spanish learning journey with the Refold approach. Welcome to everyone who is coming to this page from Medium. I’ve moved to Substack because of better customization options (mainly the ability to add other pages to the blog), and a general reduction in click-bait. Articles, as at Medium, will always be free, but there is an option to be a paid subscriber.

1. For my first update, see here.

2. For my second update, see here.

3. For my third update, see here.

4. For my fourth update, see here.

5. For my fifth update, see here.

6. For my sixth update, see here.

7. For my seventh update, see here.

8. For my eighth update, see here.

9. For my ninth update, see here.

10. For my tenth update, see here.

11. For my eleventh update, see here

12. For my twelfth update, see here

For more information about the Refold approach, see here. For a basic Spanish Anki vocabulary deck, see here.

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General Progress

Reached 1500 hours of immersion, which is supposed to be the point at which one reaches fluency (lol). Getting quite into reading a variety of different genres, but right now focusing on Spanish medieval history. Restarted aggressive listening. Exploring options for more output opportunities. Thinking about the DELE test, starting another language, and language tracking going forward.

So we’re here, at the 1500 hour mark, which is supposedly the point at which one reaches fluency. I didn’t expect this to take ~4 years, although if you told me I would be able to speak Spanish during high-school (in 2015), I would have laughed at you. Despite the fact that technically this milestone applies to listening in the language, and I’ve only actually listened for about 650-hours, I think this is still a major milestone to celebrate. Am I fluent? Silly question. In some ways yes, I can have a conversation entirely in Spanish for an hour or two with no problems, but I also mess-up conjugations, miss words, and sometimes have a very hard time watching TV shows. So I still have a long-way to go until I’m “native-like”.

I’ve also hit some other exciting milestones. 100 italki lessons, and 50 books completed that were originally in Spanish!

I’ve decided to commit to taking a DELE B2 test some time in 2025. I’m planning on taking the test at the Ferdinand and Isabella Academy in DC, sometime between January and March.

I’d also like to take a DELE C2 exam, but I don’t feel like I’m ready for that yet. Ideally after I defend my PhD, I’ll go live in Spain or a Latin-American country for 6 months, and attend a language school for part of that time. I should also have the energy for the level of test-prep required to pass this test, which I currently don’t have with my job, training, and my thousand other hobbies.

In terms of my routine, I’m still reading a ton, trying to regularly incorporate listening, doing Anki, and having a Spanish lesson twice a week. I’ve also changed how I track things, as the current system isn’t working exactly how I want. Finally, I’m planning on slowly introducing Italian and Catalan into my daily routine again at a low frequency. More on all of that in each respective section.

Open questions: What was your experience with formal Spanish exams? What has your immersion experience been past 1500 hours?

Reading

What I’m reading now

Nothing has changed, and I’m still reading plenty, perhaps too much. One of the primary reasons I have been learning Spanish is for the literature, and “culture shock”, which I have been appreciating much more taking lessons from Mailen.

Reading made up about 1/2 of my immersion time for the last 100 hours (~55 of the 105 hours I tracked). I’m not sure if this reading strategy is maximally effective, but I don’t really care. I like reading, and I give myself plenty of opportunity to practice listening and speaking with my biweekly lessons. I also try to read aloud for 30 minutes a day, which also helps with speaking.

I’ve read ten books between this update and last, including one book that I read twice. None of these books were translations, which I’m extremely happy about. Trying to save those juicy fantasy books for languages I’m less skilled at, like Italian. Like last time, I’ll split these books into the easy/medium/hard categories.

In the easy category, I read the eighth book in Pedro Urvi’s Sendero de Los Guardabosques series. This book (La reina turquesa) was much worse than the previous entry, although my standards were probably raised by re-reading Game of Thrones. Despite the orientalism, lack of character development, tedious dialog, and deus ex machina, I’m invested in finishing this series. The repetitiveness of the dialog actually makes these books a great resource for pseudo-spaced repetition. I also read Los cuatro acuerdos, which was your standard self-help fare with some mysticism thrown in, El Dorado, another book on internet usage, and Aprendiendo a aprender, a very solid book about actually effective learning strategies.

In the medium category, I read three books. The first book was GGMs Crónica de una muerte anunciada. I actually read this first book twice because I’m discussing it with one of my tutors Mailen on iTalki. The book is structured as a whodunnit murder mystery, but we know from the first page who the victim and perpetrators are. Rather the mystery is how this “death so foretold” was allowed to happen. Gabo uses some interesting vocabulary sometimes, but other than that the book was easy to get through. Despite it’s simple premise, my mind keeps being drawn back the plot and themes, which I haven’t quite figured out. I also read Habana año cero, a Cuban book set during the “special-period” after the fall of the Soviet Union that was part atmosphere, part chic-lit, and part mystery. I only cared for the atmosphere, and not the other plot elements. Finally, I read another Allende book, Violeta. This one was hard to get through because the protagonist was so unlikeable, and the narrative so personalized.

In the hard category I read Del sentimiento trágico de la vida by Unamuno, one of my ten books to read before I die. I reviewed this here. Pretty readable with my current Spanish abilities, but the philosophy was tough. Cortazar’s Bestiario was another hard book, although the stories varied quite widely in their difficulty level. I cannot recommend Cortazar enough: he’s like Borges if Borges cared a little more about character development.

Finally, I read another of Montero’s poetry collections (A puerta cerrada), but haven’t read much more poetry otherwise.

I’ve started collecting all the books I’ve read that were originally written in Spanish and sorting them into these three categories on another page of my blog. This should be updated with each blog post.

Chunking is going well, but I’m limiting it to non-fiction books. Trying to do my daily reflection in Spanish instead. I still have not finished Cien Años de Soledad, but I pinkie-promise it’s coming

Total Immersion time: 790 hours, approximately 6.5 million words. 50 books originally written in Spanish

Future Plans: Continue to read across genres, but shift focus to non-fiction to better prepare for DELE.

Open Questions: Poetry recommendations (do people actually read this stuff anymore)? Fantasy recs? Non-fiction originally in Spanish?

Sentence Mining

I’m up to 2050 cards now with a 92.36% lifetime mature retention rate, but a lower 91.36% rate in the past month. I’ve lost a lot of motivation for Anki in general, even though I recognize that it’s effective. One of my goals for this month is to add 500 new cards (across all domains) , which means making time to make new cards in my schedule. I have plenty of sentences from my mining backlog to get through. I also have been slowly doing a deck of (Spain specific?) idiomatic expressions that has been difficult but enjoyable.

Current Anki stats

Open Questions: DELE study deck? Anki Endgame?

Writing

I’ve continued to write Goodreads reviews for the books that I’ve listened to and read. I’ve started posting them weekly-ish on this blog, and I also go over them with a tutor on iTalki.

I've also been journalling in Spanish after reading non-fiction and at night. I’ve heard that the DELE is very writing focused, so I’m going to start ramping this up, but I’m not sure how.

Open Questions: What methods do you use to practice writing?

Listening

What I’m listening too

Pretty much all my listening hours from this period are from a single audiobook (Memorias de Idhun). I cannot recommend the book at all, mainly because the love triangle is vile, but if you’re a special type of teenage girl you may like it. Okay yes I also have a problem with completionism. I recognize that I need to have other sources of audio input, but that’s a work in progress. I have plenty of podcasts/YouTube videos to watch, I just need to make the time to do so.

Total Immersion time: 635 hours, 2 million words from audiobooks

Future Plans: Audiobook daily, other audio sources at least 3 hours a week.

Open Questions: Do you sentence mine musical lyrics? Film recommendations?

Speaking

I’m continuing to take lessons on iTalki, aiming for roughly two lessons a week of an hour each. This has been a bit spotty over the summer with travel, paper, and grant deadlines, but the pressure to actually keep up with people I sort of consider my friends has helped me stay consistent.

Each of my four main teachers have taken on slightly different roles. With Rafa, I end up having pretty deep conversations about philosophy and current events, which really helps to move vocabulary I have from passive immersion into the active part of my brain. Rafa and I will also spend 5-10 minutes on grammar corrections at the end of class, which has been paying gradual dividends.

Alejandro and I mainly just chat about things I’m reading and stuff that is going on in both of our lives. However, he does live corrections in a document that he sends to me at the end of the lesson that I have been using for sentence mining. For less advanced learners, I know he’ll also do cross talk, and learning via storytelling.

Misael is very focused on exposing me to Latin American culture. He’ll usually have a short, interactive presentation that we’ll go through together that contains a lot of questions for me that we will discuss. Recently, we’ve also started reading short stories from Julio Cortazar together.

I’ve also recently started a literature class with Mailén, where we’ve been discussing various Spanish short stories, and recently embarked on a read of Crónica de una muerte anunciada. Mailén’s insights are great, and her probing questions really get me to question my assumptions about the readings.

I also was taking classes with Alexander Arguelles at his language academy. However they were expensive (140 a month), during the middle of my work day, and just not all that useful. I felt like I was paying to be part of a book club. The guy is a great polyglot, but he’s a learner just like the rest of us. I was hoping to find a more vibrant/active polyglot community at the academy, but people are pretty stuck in their own lives, just like everyone else in this country.

I’m hoping to find more people to regularly talk to in Spanish in my daily life, but no girlfriend yet. I did go on a run with a girl from Panama who is a big triathlete but she was 18 so that wasn’t going to fly.

Output time: 84 hours

Explicit Grammar

None, but I think I need to for the DELE

Future Plans

I’m doubling down on Spanish baby! We are going to immerse more every day and actually do listening. However, I think I’m going to change how I’m tracking hours. Rather than only logging when I finish media, I’m going to log daily hours in my notebook, and log/review media at the end of the week. This should help motivate me to do harder to track things like writing practices/reading big books.

Other Languages

I’m going to be dabbling in Italian and Catalan for “cross training”, no more than 15 minutes a day. I don’t have time for the hours it would take to do all three languages properly, but while I focus on Spanish, I can still scratch the polyglot itch a bit.

Health

Summer has been pretty miserable, and I haven’t been taking care of myself with hard training for triathlons, deadlines at work, and being maidenless. Eating more and using the internet less should help, and language learning is the perfect hobby to combat the wicked nature of science and dating, which I am both currently struggling with.

Overall Impressions

This will be my last update for a while, until either I pass the B2 DELE test, or reach 2k hours. I’m still enjoying Spanish, which is important, but not sure how to keep improving.

Open Questions: How did you go about transitioning to beginning an L3? How do you decide when you are “done” with a language? How do you keep improving at an advanced level?

Full immersion link data link.

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Josh